The Liberation of Peter (1624)
Hendrick ter Brugghen’s 1624 The Liberation of Peter hangs at The Hague’s Mauritshuis Gallery. The official guidebook states that Ter Brugghen has painted the biblical story of Peter’s liberation from prison as recorded in Acts. The angel is waking him to release him from Herod's cell. Peter looks alarmed and folds his chained hands. My own view, on account of Peter’s great age and this peculiar angel pointing upwards, is that it rather refers to his execution in Rome, several years later. Although no angels released him from Nero’s officers, the day of his death was surely his greater liberation, for he went to his eternal home to be with His Saviour for ever.
The artist created a powerful painting with strong contrasts between light and dark, the proximity of the two faces, and Peter's expression which is most unlike the angel's calm confidence. Ter Brugghen may have copied this style from Caravaggio, whose work he had seen in Rome and which he adapted. The manner of his subject's death was most unpleasant, but his liberation was magnificent.
A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. Ecclesiastes 7:1, New King James Version
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